Why Does Lyric Da Queen Wear An Eye Patch on X Factor?

She’s made it her signature look to the max, but Lyric Da Queen of Lyric 145 hasn’t always worn an eyepatch. Early in the season, we chatted with her about her eyecessory, and this is what the X Factor contestant had to say:

Yeah, the eyepatch was actually something I was really ashamed of when I found out I had to wear it. Now it’s just become this thing. In 2008 I went completely blind because of a condition called keratoconus. What happened was my eyes both turned gray and the cornea was inflated.

So I had a cornea transplant then like three days before my first audition, an incident happened in LA and I ended up going into emergency surgery on my left eye. So now I don’t have my vision again in my left eye, and I don’t have my iris — which is the colored part. It’s black instead of brown — and I don’t have my lens.

My cornea did get stitched and I’m going through a healing process right now. I pretty much wear the patch for protection and my eye’s extremely sensitive to light because I don’t have an iris.

I was actually supposed to be in the hospital for 2 ½ weeks, but I ended up discharging myself like three days after the incident because I had to audition for The X Factor. I was so discouraged, cuz at my first audition I had like a plastic patch over my eye with tape on it.